Chapter 9 #3
"Nobody's ever given me rules that were for me," she said.
"Well. There's four of them and that was three."
"What's the fourth?"
"You eat while you talk," Kindra said. "Sip. That's not optional."
Nell sipped.
And then, over two hours, in a voice that never changed pitch once, she told them everything, and Tom wrote none of it down and remembered all of it for the rest of his life.
Her name was Nell. She had been seven in March. She thought she was eight now and might be nine, and she was not certain because she had lost track around the time the leaves came back.
She had lived in Anaconda with her mother and her mother's boyfriend and a brother who was four.
"Where's your brother?"
"I don't want to answer that."
"Okay," Kindra said.
"That's not a trick? I can really just say that?"
"You can really just say that."
Nell sipped.
The first place had been the school gymnasium, in April, where a lot of people had gone because there was a generator and a well pump, and somebody had organized it and for about five weeks it had worked.
"Then the food ran out," she said.
"How many people?"
"Two hundred at the start. Maybe forty by June."
"What happened to the rest?"
"Some left. Some got sick." She shrugged with one shoulder. "Some people started deciding who ate."
The men came in June. Not Wingman. Somebody before.
She said very little about that and Kindra did not push.
"That's where Ama was," she said. "And that's where I got these." She turned her wrists over on the tabletop, casually, the way a person shows a scar from a childhood bike wreck. "They put me on a pipe at night for about three weeks because I kept getting out. Then they stopped because I stopped."
"Why'd you stop?"
"Because I figured out that getting out isn't the hard part," Nell said. "Anybody can get out. The hard part's that there's nowhere to go, so you come back on your own in two days and then they don't have to do anything to you at all."
Tom put his hand over his mouth.
Wingman had come in August.
"He took the place off the first ones," Nell said. "There was shooting for one night and then in the morning he was in charge. He killed three of them in the parking lot and he made everybody watch."
"With the hatchet?"
"Yes."
"Nell."
"You asked."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, it's better to know." She sipped. "He's not like them. That's the thing people don't get. The first ones were just bad. Wallace isn't bad the same way. Wallace is organized."
"Say more about that."
"They eat every day," she said. "Everybody. Even the kids. Even me, mostly. He said a starving worker is a stupid worker and stupid workers cost more than food does."
"He fed you."
"He fed everybody. He counted it out." Nell's mouth did something that was not a smile. "He weighs it. There's a scale. He made it out of a board and a rock."
"And the four kids?"
"Two boys, Cass and Petey. A girl called Birdy, she's eleven. And the baby."
"Whose baby?"
"A woman named June. She came in September and she was already having it and Wallace let her stay, which everybody thought meant he was soft, and then in October he put two men out in the snow for stealing and they didn't come back."
She looked into her cup. "So he's not soft. He just thinks about what things cost."
"Why won't the baby make it past January?"
"Because June's not making milk anymore and there's no cow and there's no cans," Nell said. "Wallace knows it. He told June. He tells people the truth, that's the other thing about him."
Kindra got up and went to the stove and stood there with her back to the room for about a minute and then came back.
"Tell us about the ranch," Tom said.
"Four buildings." She used her finger on the tabletop. "Big house here. Little house here, that's where the kids sleep and the women. Bunkhouse there, that's the men. And the barn."
Tom's stomach turned over at the word.
"What's in the barn?"
"Hay and the trucks and the fuel."
"Only that?"
"Now, only that." She did not elaborate and Tom did not make her.
"How many people?"
"Nineteen. There was twenty six in October."
"What happened to seven?"
"Four went east in November because they said Wallace was going to get everybody killed. One died of his teeth."
"His teeth?"
"His face swelled up and then he died. It took about nine days." Nell said it with complete matter-of-factness. "And two got shot at a place down the Clark Fork by a man with an orange beard."
Tom and Kindra looked at each other.
"Orange beard," Tom said.
"His name's Stan-Lar. That's not a real name but it's what he says." Nell frowned. "He came to the ranch in November to talk to Wallace and they didn't fight, they just talked, and then he left."
"Talked about what?"
"About you."
The lamp flame moved in the draft.
"Say that part slowly," Tom said.
"He said there was a place on the other side of the saddle that makes soap." She was watching Tom's face now. "He had a piece of bark with writing on it and he showed it to Wallace, and Wallace said he already knew about you and had known since September and to stay off his side of the mountain."
"And what did the orange beard say?"
"He said he'd killed four people coming down off that saddle in October and one of them lied about you with his chest open, and that a man doesn't lie like that for a burned out valley."
Kindra's hand closed on the edge of the table.
"He said with his chest open," she said.
"Yes."
"Nell, do you know how many people were in that family?"
"Four. Two grown and two boys the same age as each other."
Nobody said anything for a while.
"Thank you," Tom said finally. "That's a thing we needed to know and nobody else was ever going to tell us."
"Were they yours?"
"They were here for a night. In October."
"Then they died about two hours after they got over the saddle," Nell said. "That's what Stan-Lar said. He said it was a wash two miles above the flats and it cost him seven people, which is why he wanted Wallace to go in with him."
"And Wingman said no."
"Wallace said no because he doesn't lose men." She looked up. "That's the whole reason nothing's happened to you. He's been coming here every week since October and every week he goes back and says the same thing."
"Which is what?"
"That your fence is bad and your cabin's bad and your dooryard is completely open, and none of that matters, because you never stand in it."
Tom sat back slowly.
"He said that."
"He said you're not in the house. He said he could take the house any night he wanted and that the house is empty of the thing he wants."
Nell recited it the way a child recites a thing heard through a wall four times.
"He said there's a stone wall up in the draw that he can't see from anywhere in the meadow and he's walked the whole meadow looking, and that the first time you hear anything you all go up there and he'd have to come at stone uphill in the dark."
"Sixteen men could do that," Tom said.
"He said he'd lose four. And he said four men in February is worth more than everything in your cellar, because he can't get four more men and he can get food somewhere else."
Kindra let out a long breath.
"That's the whole answer," she said. "That's why nothing's happened."
"That's exactly why nothing's happened."
"He's not scared of us. He's doing bookkeeping."
"He's doing bookkeeping," Tom said, "and we have been alive for three months because of one stone wall and a ninety second drill."
Nell said, "There's more."
"Go ahead."
"He's not trying to take your house anymore. He said that in November. He said the house isn't worth four men."
"Then what's he doing?"
"He's trying to get you to come out." Nell put both hands around the cup. "That's what all of it's been. The dog and the writing and the pot and the soap on the stick. He said if he can make you come out one time, on his ground, then it costs him nothing."
"And that's why he's gone to the Warden."
"He went down eleven days ago to trade for men. He's going to give the Warden fuel and get people."
"How many?"
"I don't know."
"Nell."
"I don't know. I'm not lying." For the first time all night her voice went up slightly. "I ran on the second day after he left. I don't know what he came back with or if he's back."
"Okay."
"I don't know."
"I believe you," Tom said. "Nell, I believe you."
She was breathing hard.
Kindra put a hand on the table near her, not on her.
"Last question tonight," Kindra said. "Then we're done and you sleep till noon."
"Okay."
"Why here?"
Nell looked at her.
"You walked nine miles over a saddle in December with no boots," Kindra said. "There's a hundred empty houses in this valley. Why us?"
"Because of the fire."
"The one Tom built?"
"No." Nell shook her head. "The one in the tree."
"The cache."
"When I took the food out of the tree I knew you'd know. I put it back on purpose so you'd know somebody careful did it and not a bear."
Her hands were working at the blanket. "And then I left the knife, because I thought if you knew him then you'd know what it meant, and if you didn't know him it was just a knife and nothing happened."
"Nell," Tom said. "Where did you get that knife?"
She did not answer for a long moment.
"I took it off Wallace's shelf," she said. "He's got a shelf. He keeps one thing off everybody."
Tom looked at the stove.
"How did you know it was Chip's?" he said.
"Because I was there when he came back with it," Nell said, "and he put it on the shelf and he stood there for a while, and then he said out loud, to nobody, he said: that was the best woodsman in this valley."
Tom got up and walked to the far wall and stood facing it.
Kindra did not go to him. She sat with the girl.
"Nell," she said, "did you know Chip Charter?"
"He came to the ranch two times in the summer with rabbits. Before Wallace." Her face changed, just slightly, for the first time all night. "He gave me a piece of jerky both times and the second time he said, don't eat that here, eat it somewhere they can't see you."
"That sounds like him."